


With Foresight

by PhantomEngineer



Series: Butterfly Wings [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 04:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomEngineer/pseuds/PhantomEngineer
Summary: After Severus's death, Lily and Petunia go to visit his parents, just briefly.





	With Foresight

It was Petunia who came with her to the tatty house on Spinner’s End, a familiar row of houses that Lily had walked along so many times but never in the same way as she did that time with Petunia. Lily appreciated her support, especially when she realised that Petunia had clearly blown off a boyfriend to spend her weekend in Cokeworth looking after her younger sister. Petunia had shrugged and said she’d find someone better, that Lily was more important, which had made Lily cry. She did that a lot.

She had no idea if the Snapes would want to see her, or if she wanted to see them, but it seemed like something she had to do. The door opened, and they were gestured in by a couple that Lily recognised but at the same time she could see how different they looked from the last time she had seen them. They seemed older, subdued, as if the life had been drained out of them. Tobias had always seemed so large and imposing, but now he seemed as if everything that was within him had been hollowed out leaving an empty husk of a man. As if all of the anger that had hidden the fear that had fuelled him had been realised, leaving him with nothing. As if it had taken losing his son to realise that he actually loved him, when it was far too late. Eileen had always seemed so impassive and in control, but now she seemed small and frail. As if she had died a long time ago, only she was still alive, mechanically going through the motions. As if there was nothing left inside of her except the aching emptiness of grief. They looked like parents who had lost their child.

Lily sat awkwardly in their kitchen as Eileen made them all tea, her movements slow and heavy. Petunia seemed uncomfortable, which was understandable. She had never really liked Severus, and had never had any contact with his parents. The kitchen was as shabby as the outside suggested, which Lily knew Petunia would hate. Petunia had always hated things being dirty or untidy, and there was no hiding the state of the Snapes’ house. Poverty was not an attractive look, and she was under no illusion that the grief of losing a son would have improved that. It felt like a graveyard, as if all the occupants were dead, not just the boy who would never return. 

She wondered if, had things been different, there would ever have been an occasion for her to sit there with Petunia, Severus and his parents. She doubted it, which hurt. She didn’t want to be sitting awkwardly in a run-down terraced house in Cokeworth with her sister missing a date, she wanted to be a child playing outside with her best friend, dreaming big dreams without any fear. She couldn’t imagine that Petunia wanted to be there, and she doubted either of the Snapes wanted them there either.

The room was quiet. There wasn’t much to be said, so not much was said. Lily had never been close to either Tobias or Eileen, and Petunia had had even less to do with them. They were strangers in a way, drawn together by a string that had left them bound together when Severus ceased to play his role in their lives. Words wouldn’t bring Severus back, and they wouldn’t repair the damaged relationships each of them had had with him before his death.

“It’s all that magic,” Tobias had said, exhausted as if he had repeated the same words over and over again to the point that all other feelings had worn themselves out. Eileen looked away, as if she had heard his opinion on magic more times that she could remember, but also as if she no longer had any heart to object. As if she could find nothing to disagree with, caught up in the thought that without magic Severus would have been a normal boy in Cokeworth, still exposed to potential dangers but not anything like a werewolf. He would have been sitting there with them, uncertain about the strange silences that echoed around the room. 

But it was sitting there, in quiet contemplation, that Lily had begun to truly think. She looked at Eileen, a woman who had been born in the magical world and then abruptly left it. She had never gone back, walked away from everything she had ever known. Lily hadn’t understood how she could have done that, even for love, especially not given the precarious relationship that Tobias and Eileen seemed to share. She wondered if she could understand it better now. The room and the sparse conversation seemed to be haunted not just by the ghost of Severus, whose absence gaped painfully, but by the looming presence of the castle that had once enchanted her so much. The castle that she shared with Eileen, even if they’d never been there together.

“You don’t have to go back,” Eileen had said softly, words that were both out of place but perfectly placed. Even after she and Petunia had left, walked away from Spinner’s End to their parents’ considerably nicer house, those words continued to resonate in her mind. She took grateful pleasure in the hugs of her parents, glad that she was alive and that she had a family. Appreciating everything that she had taken for granted as being unbearably precious.


End file.
